A team sport is an activity in which two or more opposing teams compete against each other by using a ball or another object, according to rules. Examples of team sports include basketball, football, baseball, hockey and soccer. Team athletes must work together to achieve a common goal and celebrate wins with their teammates, and they share the responsibility for defeat. Team athletes often learn to be more supportive, understanding and patient than those who play solo sports. However, team sports can also cause more injuries than individual sports, and people can become competitive to earn personal awards rather than focusing on the common goal of the team.
Team sports help children develop skills that are essential for a lifetime of well-being, including social competence, self-confidence, connections, character and caring. They also teach children the value of time, a concept that will benefit them in later life, when they must manage their finances and work schedules. They also help children stay healthy by encouraging them to engage in physical activity and eat a nutritious diet. However, many people find that they have difficulty participating in team sports due to the cost and lack of availability.
A growing body of evidence shows that playing team sports teaches children important life lessons that are valuable in their academic and professional lives, such as the importance of collaborating with others to achieve a shared goal and of learning from both success and failure. Studies involving children who participate in organized sports have found that they are more likely to be physically active, have higher academic performance and have better eating habits than those who do not. In addition, these children have lower rates of obesity and are at a reduced risk of developing chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and depression.
Studies of team coordination have shown that a winning team will tend to create space by stretching and expanding on the field (increasing distances between players) while a losing team will tend to contract and close spaces on the field (reducing distances between players). These collective movements are captured by specific measurements of spatial dispersion, such as stretch index, team spread and effective playing space.
By analyzing tracking data on the position of each player during competition, it is possible to identify these dynamic interactions in team sport performance. It is proposed that the properties of dimensional compression and degeneracy, as measured by existing variables such as synchrony and directional coherence, are precursors to a new property, called ‘team synergy’. This property captures the cooperative inter-player behavior that supports a high level of synchronization in lateral and longitudinal motion, as well as a coordinated counterphase relation in expansion and contraction movement patterns. These dynamics can be induced by changes in ball possession, and the emergence of a coordinated pattern of response to constraints. This provides a more holistic approach to describing the behavior of sport teams, and allows for the integration of data from a wide range of measurement methods and sports.